Summa: diary (December 7-13, 2024)
Some places will not let you go, however far you travel.
December 7 (Saturday). Yesterday evening, three million mobile [cell] phone users in Wales and England received a very loud alarm. My first thought was that Putin had finally lost his rag, and launched Russia’s nuclear arsenal. The Government’s ‘red weather alert’ became reality around 3.00 am. Driving wind and rain coming from the west punished the town. In January 2013, a severe storm coupled with a tidal swell had ripped up a sizable section of Aberystwyth’s Promenade along North Beach. We were hoping desperately that the same scenario would not be repeated today.
Sometime before 6.00 am, there’d been a power cut. Only the hospital, operating on emergency generators, was illuminated. I remembered the blackouts during the miners’ strike in 1974. For two nights a week, the UK was plunged into darkness – as it had been during the Blitz, but without the Luftwaffe. As children, we walked the streets at night with candles in jam jars, and ate our meals lit by paraffin lamps. It was like camping at home. We bemoaned the day when life returned to normal.
The power returned around 10.30 am, only to flicker and die half-an-hour later. At least my furniture wasn’t afloat on the ground floor due to the storm. As calamities go, my household had got off light (as it were). In the semi-darkness of a cold lounge, against the continued onslaught of the storm — ‘full of sound and fury’ — I practised fingering techniques son the guitar. My left ‘pinky’ (little finger) is bent inwards at a 45 angle, as a consequence of Dupuytren’s contracture. There’s no cure; I’ve undergone surgery to straighten it twice already, but to no avail. The condition has implications for how the fingers on that hand negotiate scales, arpeggios, and chords; it also limits my span.
December 8 (Sunday). The second Sunday of Advent. The calm after the storm. 9.30 am: An ambulation. The roads were strewn with tree debris; areas of Plasgrug Avenue (which is on a flood plane) were inundated. In the background, the remarkable restoration and reopening of Notre-Dam Cathedral, Paris, has become a powerful metaphor for renewal arising from disaster; while the conversion of Damascus, as rebels ousted Bashar al-Assad from power, a symbol that change (for better or for worse) was possible.
2.00 pm: A little guitar cleaning and maintenance.
December 9 (Monday). 7.30 am: Writing. 9.30 am: Off for a dental consultation about a crumbling old filling. Afterwards, I picked new nasal medication at the pharmacy and headed for our express supermarket, only to find the semi-skimmed milk shelf empty. Returned home via the store’s mothership nearby, where I obtained 4 liters plus a gluten-free loaf.
10.30 am: Studiology. I returned to the sounds associated with the mass funeral at Aberfan on October 27, 1966. The aim is not to copy the soundtrack on the British Pathé news clip (see: Summa: diary (December 1-6, 2024)) but, rather, to emulate its essence. My source material was gathered from the Aural Diary archive, and comprised field recordings of voices, aircraft, birds, a megaphone announcement, bumps, and scrapes, which had been recorded in many different places during twenty five year period. In the composition these disparate sounds coexist, as though in one place and at one time. The process occupied me for the remainder of the day.
Tuesday 10 (Tuesday).
There are things that I’m confident I can do, but not confident that I either should or need to do.
8.00 am: A communion. 8.45 am: Studiology. I pressed on with the mass funeral section. By 12.30 pm, the environmental section, (made up of field recordings) and the choral section (which I’d constructed last week) were wedded. 1.00 pm: I could hear the composition no longer. It was time to lay it aside, for now.
2.00 pm: A review of the pedalboard array: hunting down a ‘buzz’ (not a ‘hum’, mind you) that was caused by the proximity of the multi-effects unit to the amplifiers. 3.15 pm: I continued yesterday evening’s engagement with equipment manuals. I forget so much so quickly.
7.30 am: An evening at the Bank Vault, Aberystwyth. It has the vibe of a small jazz club — intimate and compact, with a small stage, and a bar at the rear that sold non-alcoholic beer on draft (among other things). The venue takes risks, offering a type of ‘difficult’, experimental, and recondite music that has only a small audience, as well as acts with a more popular appeal. I was there to hear Tim Beckham perform on electric guitar and pedals, in a largely improvisatory set.
I found it impossible to switch off that part of my mind that assesses stage craft and etiquette — from the setting-up of equipment, to the sound check, to the performers’ entry onto the stage, to the MC’s announcement (such as it was tonight), to the conduct of the performance, to the performers’ departure from the stage. This mode of performance, like every other, is fraught with perils: the possibility of equipment failure; the vagaries and quality of the house PA system and mixing-desk operator; the unpredictability of the audience; and the uncertainty that musical ideas will gel. But with improvisation, you fly by the seat of your pants.
December 11 (Wednesday). The coldest day of the season so far, possibly. 7.00 am: Writing. 8.45 am: A review of the work undertaken on the Aberfan [working title] project to date. It has proceeded more quickly than I’d anticipated. Which is not always to be welcomed. But, in the future, there’ll be slow and barren periods to compensate.
The Christmas tree has been chosen. It’ll be harvested today, and placed in the water of a bapistry, in a disused chapel called Moriah, until delivery. (I theologised in vain.) 12.30 pm: The house’s external windows have been cleaned. They shine!
2.00 pm: I set out a list of the conditions and contexts pertaining to my chronic nasal problems, in preparation for a hospital consultation tomorrow. 3.15 pm: I returned to the funeral composition with fresh ears, a better understanding, new ideas, and a hatchet. 4.00 pm: An ambulation. The town, despite it’s naff Christmas decorations (courtesy of our parsimonious county council), is at its most cosey and homely at this time of the year.
7.30 pm: The Christmas-tree angel required a refit. It’s frock is illuminated. But the original lights burned too warm; they’d scorched the plastic frame on which they were mounted; and I’d no idea whether the frock’s fabric was fire proof. However, I’d watched an alarming film of a real Christmas tree going up in flames and, very quickly, the room it was in too, as part of my health and safety training on fire prevention at the university. Thus, I’ve learned to err on the side of caution. The angel was bought in a Christmas shop in Devil’s Kitchen, New York, in 2005, along with a suggestively shaped hot-dog tree ornament.
December 12 (Thursday).
Make no claims for yourself.
9.30 am: Off to the hospital at Carmarthen for a second consultation with an ears, nose, and throat specialist. I’ve problems in all three departments. He’s adept at separating out my deficits — which I experience as an undifferentiated totality. I suffer from tinnitus (and some hearing loss, as a consequence), non-allergic rhinitis (and chronic sinusitis, as a consequence), and a misaligned condyloid process, being that part of the jaw bone which hinges on the skull (and an inflamed left ear eustasian tube, as a consequence). Each requires a separate address and palliative strategy. The journey up my nose and down my throat is always a joy to watch.
3.30 pm: Home, and catch-up.
December 13 (Friday). 7.00 am: Writing. 8.00 am: Christmassy preps and correspondence. 9.00 am: Studiology. Equipment review. You don’t need much equipment to achieve a great deal. Sometimes, a great deal of equipment inspires very little. Sometimes, any amount of equipment gets in the way. The guitar rig required a more sophisticated looper/phease sampler (which facilitates sound layering) in addition to the simpler type, installed on the pedalboard. (Belt and braces.) There are some super, young tutors of gear on YouTube. SO much better than manuals, which often start at a point on the learning curve where the user isn’t and doesn’t care to be.
10.30 am: I reviewed the two Aberfan [working title] compositions under development. I continue to learn, and often such fundamental lessons as ought to have been grasped years ago.
See also: Intersections (archive); Diary (September 15, 2018 – June 30, 2021); Diary (July 16, 2014 – September 4, 2018); John Harvey (main site); John Harvey: Sound; Facebook: The Noises of Art; X; Bluesky; Instagram; Archive of Visual Practice